


one month

by labeledbones



Category: Eyewitness (US TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 15:19:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8922175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labeledbones/pseuds/labeledbones
Summary: A look at Philip in those four weeks before 'one month later'. Spoilers for the finale.





	

**the first week**

Philip thinks about dying.

Thinks about slipping quietly, peacefully into some expansive blankness where nothing bad can touch him. Just leaving, vanishing, no pain, nothing. He’s too young to know if he believes in anything after, but he tries hard to believe his mom is somewhere, waiting. If she isn’t, then he isn’t. He isn’t anything. He is nothing.

He thinks about his mom dying. Both her actual death - terrified, at the hands of a killer, his fault - and all those times he thought she was dying. The times he would wait for her to come home and hours would pass and the sun would come up and he’d think, _Okay, this is it._ The times he’d call hospitals, friends, anyone to find her and then she’d just show up smiling with a toy or fast food and he’d forget all his fear. The times he came home from school to find her asleep on the couch only she wouldn’t wake up and he shook her and shook her until finally she’d come back up, eyes blinking at him, ‘Hey, baby,’ smiling, a hand in his hair.

She has died so many times for him, but he knows this time he won’t be able to resurrect her.

He thinks about Lukas dying. Because that’s what it felt like when he pulled him from the water, holding him there, his body limp, heavy, barely breathing. He cannot shake the feeling of it no matter how close he gets to Lukas’ breathing, bleeding, warm body. Even when he’s so close Philip feels Lukas’ heart beating in his own chest. He still remembers holding Lukas in that moment when he didn’t know, that weighted body against his, the worst thing happening.

( _It got worse_ , he tells himself. _If it had all just ended there-_ He doesn’t finish that thought.)

He thinks about Helen dying. Being shot, a car accident, finally breaking for the last time and taking those pills. His new family falling apart so easily. Everything falls apart so easily.

He thinks about Ryan dying again and again and again. Always at Philip’s own hands this time, knuckles raw and bleeding, fingers turning white as they press into his throat. There’s no joy in it, no relief or justice, just pure white anger that burns him from the inside out.

**the second week**

He doesn’t sleep.

Or he sleeps for days at a time.

When he doesn’t sleep, he lies in bed, staring up at the ceiling, willing himself to feel absolutely nothing. Until his body hums as if there are drills inside of him hollowing out his bones and his veins and his organs until he is truly empty.

And then he lets himself feel it all over again, lets it all flood back in, until he is screaming into his pillow, crying as if his entire body is trying to come out of itself, until he is nothing but a nerve ending that feels every single thing.

When he sleeps, it’s like drowning. He just goes under and doesn’t come back up. And when he does finally wake, his body feels like there are piles of rocks on top of him, his limbs refuse to move, his head cannot leave the pillow.

He doesn’t know what’s happening to him, what’s going to happen to him. 

Helen and Gabe and the counselor want him to take pills. They talk about his grief triggering something bigger, about PTSD, how the pills will make things a little easier. But he tells them he’s an addict’s son and he can’t, won’t. They tell him they aren’t those kind of pills, just something low dosage to help get him over to the other side of this. But he recognizes the name from the pills his mom used to keep in the closet by the bathroom. He tells them no again. He can’t, won’t.

But he does, because his will isn’t that strong these days and he is tired. Helen and Gabe keep the pills in their room and only give them to him when he’s supposed to take them. He is grateful for their overprotection, their diligence. He doesn’t know what he would do with those pills sitting in the room with him.

They make his brain feel muddled. They make it so he can’t cry anymore. They make him feel blurred around the edges. But he wakes up with limbs that will move, a head that will come up off the pillow.

**the third week**

Lukas comes. Most days, Lukas is there. Sitting by his bed. Talking or not talking. Lukas is there.

Philip tries to be present for him, but some days are harder than others.

Some days he pretends to be asleep and Lukas says really quietly, “Philip, please. Don’t go away. Not now.” He pretends to be asleep and Lukas crawls into bed next to him, presses his lips to the back of Philip’s neck and says, “I love you.”

Philip wonders when they will say that to each other, fully awake, and not full of pleading and tears.

Some days he feels closer to normal and Lukas talks to him about his dad, his bike, anything. And Philip is able to keep up with the conversation for the most part. He smiles at the right times, makes jokes he thinks he should make. But he feels like he is shrunken down inside of himself and he is watching some larger shell that looks like him laugh and make jokes.

Some days Lukas cries and says, “If you hadn’t met me, none of this would’ve happened. You would be okay. She would be okay.” Philip doesn’t stop him, doesn’t deny it. Because Lukas is right. If they hadn’t met, his mom would probably still be alive. If they hadn’t met, everything bad that has happened probably wouldn’t have happened.

But they did meet and those things did happen and his mom is dead and right now he needs Lukas and he is so grateful for Lukas and so he reaches out and twists his fingers up with Lukas’, squeezes them tightly. He just holds Lukas’ hand because it’s enough in that moment. And then Philip says, “I don’t regret anything about you.”

This is the first thing in weeks Philip has said that doesn’t feel like a lie.

Some days they don’t talk at all. Philip pulls Lukas into bed with him and for a while he is only thinking about Lukas’ skin and his mouth and nothing else exists but the heat and friction. For a while he is alive in a very basic way. He can feel his blood moving and his breath coming heavy in and out.

Lukas is quiet afterwards as Philip watches him get dressed. He won’t look at Philip.

“What?” Philip asks.

Lukas shakes his head, shrugging on an old flannel shirt. “Nothing.” And then, “It feels like you’re not even there when we-” And then, kneeling down on the bed and kissing Philip so slowly, “I guess I just miss you.”

**the fourth week**

The pain shifts. Instead of being the first thing he feels, it is the second, sometimes even the third thing he feels. It is as heavy as it has always been, but it has moved behind something else. Like a shadow cast instead of a blinding light.

He gets out of bed. He eats breakfast with Helen and Gabe. He smiles and it doesn’t feel like he’s using every muscle in his body.

He goes outside, feels the sun and the breeze on his skin. He’d forgotten it was summer. He’d forgotten how warm and how green everything was.

He goes for a walk even though he can sense Helen’s hesitance about letting him go anywhere alone. But she lets him and he walks all the way to the water. He sits down on the dock and watches the water moving with the wind. He feels safe.

On his way back home, he calls Lukas just to hear the way his smile sounds.

Philip thinks about his new family, about Lukas, about how some things have broken, but other things have formed brand new. Not about replacing things he has lost, but about looking at the new things and figuring out how his life will shape around them, about who he will become because of them.

Philip thinks about living.


End file.
